In The Words Of Jack
by Suulsa-Krii and Huntress
Summary: My first-ever fanfic...ever...heheh
1. Of Cows And What There Once Was

Disclaimer: I own the DVD, the soundtrack CD, a Jack costume from a play I was in, a dagger, and a cutlass. I own nothing else. Or do I?...no...  
  
A/N: Although I''ve rped incessantly for a long time, read fanfic everyday, and write creatively for my own entertainment, and watch POTC compulsively....This is the first time I''ve written fanfic of any kind. Ever. So while I think it probably won't altogether suck, I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing. So if you review, please keep that in mind and be nice ;;   
  
Chapter One-"Of Cows And What There Once Was."  
  
Ultimately, it was the cow's fault.  
  
I will contend that to the end. I blame the cow. And so can anyone else who's possessions were missing after I parted company with said person. Just remember that: If it weren't for the cow, I wouldn't be Captain Jack Sparrow.  
  
Now, don't look at me like that! There's a perfectly logical explanation. Yes, logical. I am capable of it, you know. However, I've heard the beginning is a good place to start, so let's give that approach a try, eh?  
  
When asked if I was born and/or raised in a barn, I have reason to answer in the affirmative. Not that it was something that automatically meant I was at all good with animals. To date, I've been bitten by three rabbits, five cats, eight dogs, four horses, two pigs, a hawk, a parrot, nine donkeys, and a three-toed sloth. But sloths have no teeth, so that wasn't that bad. Interesting story, though, but since we're starting from the beginning, we'll leave that there for now.  
  
I was an odd child, I really was. At four, my Dad brought me in for a check up and I bit the doctor. I don't mean a little snap. I mean "Chomp!" Hard. On the wrist. Which may not be so unusual, no one really likes doctors, and biting is relatively common in four year old...isn't it? I dunno. Anyways, the odd part came when I insisted that, since I bit him, he was now a werewolf. I also had it in my head to find a silver bullet and put it to good use, but my Dad's belt on my backside took that idea promptly out of my mind.  
  
Then when I was six, I started hunting by ambush: I'd sit quietly in a tree, and wait until someone walked underneath it, then jump out of the tree and scare them silly.  
  
By the age of seven, pretending to be things was what interested me. "Things" often included talking animals, which isn't so weird, talking objects, which is a little stranger, and things pretending to be other things. For example, a rabbit who's pretending to be a cat. I also liked to play out scenes for more than one character. Just imagine what the other people from the town must have thought, seeing a child, who, at the tender age of seven, was already considered an established looney, out in a field trying to be a cat and dog at the same time. It's so difficult to chase yourself around a cornfield, you know.  
  
There's that look again! Now, cut it out! It's not like I do it anymore...I do not!  
  
Yeah, I was a kid once, too. Not that it's something I'm proud of. I was quick, athletic, and clever. But I was also a scrawny little piece of work: clothes hanging loose as sails on a slow day in the doldrums, ribs sticking out like a washboard, and looking chronically half starved though I ate everything I could lay hand on. Yes, I was a severely scraggly whelp...nothing like the pinnacle of masculinity I am now.  
  
What have I just said about looking at me like that?  
  
Anyhow, so when I was a kid, I lived in this place called Oxbay. It was nice enough...I guess. Two towns on the island, Oxbay it's self, which had the port, and Greenbay, which was on the other side of the island, through the jungle. There may have been some odd things in that tangle of foliage, but I liked it, mostly because it made me look brave to be the kid hanging out in the jungle when no one else would go. I was an odd kid, like I said.  
  
I remember one time when I was nine, I went out into the jungle-and it's not like I even go very far from the city gates-and went out to putter around in what I considered to be "my" pond. A pool that was up to where my waist was at the time, where nice, cool water, seeped up from an underground, freshwater stream. I used to go out there with wooden toy boats to float, buckets to get water to make mud puddles for reasons I don't remember, and so forth. On that particular day, it was excruciatingly hot, even for in the Caribbean. So, naturally, I got into my pond, and took a nice, cool, little swim. At some point during this, I fell asleep, with my head on the bank, to prevent drowning. Remember that, you, drowning is never a good thing. It started getting dark, and people started going "Where's little Jack?" and started getting worried, because the last anyone saw of me, I was heading into the jungle. About one panicked hour later, someone I don't remember found me dozing peacefully, half-submerged in a pond. I was brought home, clothes, hair and everything dripping, really soaked. Once home, was given a good talking to that I don't quite remember either. Something about taking unnecessary risks, and the possible dangers of jungles.  
  
Another point about the young me: I seem to recall always having been easily impressed by shiny things and money...it seems some things just don't change.  
  
The town of Oxbay was a series of scattered farms where there were valleys, and really, really green hills where there were no valleys. I do mean really, really green. Looked like an over-rated painting there, and almost the whole damn island was just like it. But there was one redeeming feature, as I saw it, of the place: there was a nice tall hill in just the right spot to overlook the port. When I wasn't tramping around the jungle or doing what I was actually supposed to be doing back at home, I was up there.  
  
I could often be found down actually at the port too, though someone always eventually removed me from the premises. Probably afraid I'd be overlooked and therefore stepped on by the huge hulks of sailors. I was a small kid, like I've mentioned. This, of coarse didn't mean I didn't try to sneak onboard some of the ships, just out of curiosity, and to be a little pain in the hind quarters. The farthest I ever got, I did by somehow "accidentally" sneaking aboard when all the men where busy hefting and carrying, and simply hid away in the first below-deck corner I found. I was ecstatic and thrilled when I felt the ship start moving. Though I wasn't there long before I was found, all the men where very impressed that I had managed to get on the ship in the first place, never mind remain undetected for as long as I did, and as they'd barely left the piers, they just lowered me overboard and let me swim the relatively short distance back to shore. As a joke, they also placed a small piece of paper marked "RETURN TO SENDER" on the back of my shirt. Still legible when I got back home, though most of the ink had washed away during the swim. I never quite explained to my Dad why I'd been "returned to sender" or from where. Mostly because he never bothered to ask. Probably a wise thing to do.  
  
When I was growing up, I was taken to be a bit slow. Nonsense of coarse, I've never been dumb, I was just smart in my own way.  
  
You're looking at me like that again!  
  
As I was saying before I was so interrupted, they didn't think me the brightest star in the firmament: Oxbay was a decently well-to-do town, and even farmers' sons were expected to do some decent book-learning with the local priest. I was simply incapable of doing it. Numbers that did not directly and clearly pertain to some task were firmly and decidedly out of my grasp, and I am no friend of the written word. Letters tend not to stay put, and it's bloody distracting. They seem to maintain their proper positions for everyone else, though. Go figure. It's also why people are surprised when they see some very much-read-looking books in my cabin. But with letters that change residence every few seconds, reading's a challenge, and I like challenges.  
  
But I digress. I do that a lot. I never did well with what I was actually supposed to be learning, and was one terrible farmer's son-what with my innate ability to inspire naturally herbivorous animals to suddenly become carnivorous in my presence- and never knew how to sit still indoors for long, but one thing I did know well is everything that was happening in the port. Whether it was actually visible from where I was or not, I knew what was happening, sometimes from nothing more than what the seagulls were up to. Anywhere were there was a lot of water, I sort of tended to gravitate toward there. Some things simply don't change.  
  
Never got a long with my peers either, now that I think of it. Never saw eye-to-eye, us, but I was alright with that, seeing as I''ve always been vastly superior to them. Couldn't out-learn them at school, and, as scrawny a little scrapper as I was, had to cheat blatantly to outfight them, but out-thinking and practical joking, there was something I could do.  
  
Some times I got the better of my peers without their knowing. For example, some of them would get a few shillings for a snack after lessons. I never got any money, living as close to the church as I happened to, but I knew I wanted their money. They knew I was a bit odd, but not violent, so they didn't naturally fear me, I hadn't quite the skill to pickpocket it yet, and I was too small to be intimidating, so that left me with my brain. Thankfully, it's always been in working order. I could almost always manage to go up to one of them, and start talking with them about pretty much anything, and then turn the conversation toward money. By the end of the conversation, they were so badly confused, they'd simply give me their money, since I'd made it seem like a good idea at the time.  
  
Adults were not exempt from my tricks either: and that includes the mayor (Oxbay had no Governor, we were under the jurisdiction of Redmond's Governor-Redmond being the island closest to ours, almost visible in the east.). One day when I heard he'd be out and his house empty for about a half an hour, I immediately set to work. I got my friend and cajoled him into helping me remove everything from the mayor's house that we could carry that was not nailed down, and moved it out to the jungle-through back roads, so no one saw us. When we'd finished stealing the mayor's decor, his house looked quite Spartan indeed. So we were actually being nice when we put a small pile of banana peels in the middle of his floor, and covered the outside of the windows in melted caramel. My friend got all the ground floor windows, while I climbed up the storm gutters and the ridges in the siding to get the higher up windows. Unfortunately, we weren't finished when the mayor and his lot got home, and my friend and I was forced to help my friend escape. There was no time left for me to get away, so I had to hide in a broom closet. I was discovered, of coarse, as if they didn't know I did it. I took sole responsibility (I got my friend into things, and I had to get him out. If we got caught, it was my fault for not getting us out, and so I'd carry the punishment alone. So went our agreement, anyways). It was required that I put all the furniture back and remove the caramel from the windows. But it worth it to see the look on the mayor's face, hah  
  
Yes, I actually had a friend, though Ron was more an accomplice than a friend. He had rather untidy red-black hair, clipped to just above his ears. His skin was light for someone living in the Caribbean, and he had a generous helping of freckles. He wasn't mischievous by nature, but he was a follower by nature and probably still is, and I'm a born leader, so we got along fine. We never played in the traditional sense of it, never shot the breeze together. But whenever I was up to something that needed an extra set of hands, I'd go calling on him. Got off some good gags with his help, and I think by the end, I'd taught Ron how to have fun.  
  
And the cow? She was at home, of coarse. You don't bring cows into the jungle, though if I had, I wouldn't be here telling you this. My parents...uh...bloody hell, I can''t even remember their names. I can only assume they were Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow. But at any rate, they were farmers. Yes, farmers. Loyal...English...farmers. Which is why I haven't spoken about them in more years than I care to count. They had every variety of quadruped you could care to imagine. Horses, pigs, dogs, cats, a bull, sheep, goats, and that fateful cow. Oh, and chickens...I guess they have two feet, though...  
  
And the cow, you ask again? My, you are impatient, aren't you? But, ah, yes, the bovine author of my fate. Well, before I explain that, you have to know that my Mum was already dead. I think. Or maybe just left my Dad before I can remember, either way, I never knew the old hag. And at the time, my Dad was in the barn, with said cow.  
  
This is the part where you're likely to make about the same observation most people make when and id I tell them this particular bit of my tale: you're about to think "It must not be true, or how could this looney old pirate be talking about it so lightly?" But the minute you think that, you're forgetting that I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. And I'm the type who tends to make light of serious things. A healthy practice, I say, though some just call it morbid.  
  
My Dad was in the barn, with the cow. It was evening, and I was out in the jungle outside the city. Puttering around in "my" pond, as I seem to recall. Since it was evening, as my Dad milked the cow, the sun was going down, and you can't milk cows in the dark, so he had a lantern there with him. The lantern was of the candle-in-a-glass-dome variety. Unfortunately, this goddamned cow was of the ornery variety.  
  
The cow kicked. The lantern shattered and fell. The barn burned, and everything and everyone in it. The barn, the hay, the horses and bull and chickens. The cow. My Dad. Gone. Just like that.  
  
Of coarse, no one bothered to tell me. I could see the smoke from the jungle, but thought it was another town bonfire. Never had much interest in such social events, so I ignored it. Later when it was getting dark and I was getting hungry, I ambled home, and there was a crowd of people on our property. I pushed my way through, and there it was: the ashes, the remains, the nothingness. A black-burnt hoof. A tarnished cow-bell. The smell of burned flesh and hair and blood: a smell I'm sorry to say I only became more familiar with over these years.  
  
I'm not sure how long I stood there. I'm not sure if I cried. But if I did, it was the last time I ever would. The ashes were cold and dead when I saw something glinting in them. I wandered over the skeleton of the barn, the fallen timbers that flaked black dust, needling out of the ground, and pulled away that blackened metal of a few door handles. Under all that was a ring. A silver ring with a blue sapphire in it-my father's. I looked at it, and jammed it on my finger, and stood, looking around. The moon was up, and turned all the shadows around me into wraiths. My own shadow, the shadow of the skeletal barn. All was shadows, all was silence.  
  
Now that I think of it, I don't actually think I cried. I don't think I felt anything. That was when I learned to turn my emotions off or just recede into my own head. To kill, to lose, to lie and not feel it, I learned it all right there in the pit of ash.  
  
A hand came down on my shoulder. A heavy hand that felt strong and sure, large like a paw. I mistook it for a farmer's hand, and turned, for one dizzying moment thinking my father had escaped the fire.  
  
But that was not my father there. It was a large man, powerful looking, tall and broad, and built like a bear, with long, shaggy, tangled, dark brown hair to match. There was not much light in the middle of the night, but I could see his weathered features, the blue bandana around his head, the gold hoop pierced to his right ear, the brown tunic and pants, his sharp features. I knew this man was not Dad, but he looked just like him, and at a closer look, not unlike me.  
  
"Jack?" he asked in what I assume was the gentlest tone he could manage. It wasn't gentle at all really, it was rough, a bit like a talking dog, but it seemed like he wasn't willing it to be. I nodded curiously, probably looking disoriented, maybe even frightened. The man nodded back and continued talking: "Lad, my name is Christopher Sparrow. I'm your father's brother, your uncle Ris. You're coming with me, now."  
  
Ris held me by the shoulder and turned to lead me away. I stood among the remains, as steadfastly refusing to move as an old willow: roots too deep to move, it felt. But I was only a young sapling at ten years old, or it would have been even harder. My roots there did not run as deep. Ris sighed, and knelt down in front of me so our faces were at the same height, and he said to me as sensitively as he could manage:  
  
"Jack, lad, what I'm about to teach you might be the most important thought ever put in your head. I want you to take everything you're feeling, and I want you to put it away for another time. There will be a time to mourn, a time to think, a time to cry if that's how you choose to deal with it, but it's not here, not now. Wait for the opportune moment."  
  
I nodded.  
  
"The opportune moment." I whispered. Ris smiled grimly.  
  
"Now I want you to walk with me. We're going to walk away from here. But take one last good look around you, because in a minute you'll never see it again, it'll be behind you, figuratively and literally. You are going to walk with me away from here, and you're going to look forwards. No glance over your shoulder, never look back. Don't ever look back."  
  
I nodded again and Ris stood. I took my last look, checking for anything else like my father's ring that may have survived, but there was nothing but ashes and bones and metal. I looked up at Ris, who nodded again.  
  
"Now. Never look back."  
  
Ris put his heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me again and this time I followed him away into the night. Looking perfectly normal. Not consciously aware of feeling anything. Well, not feeling anything isn't quite true.  
  
I felt nothing, but I felt Strong.  
  
A/N: So...yeah. That was my first chapter of fanfic. I know this is supposed to be a humour/adventure fic and all that, and the ending of this chapter was a bit more angst-y, but what do you expect? He was just orphaned, after all, and he's only ten...but anyways, I promise the next chapter will go back to being more light hearted, particularly since Jack starts getting comfortable as his new self. Assuming that R&R means around here what I'm relatively sure it means (read&review?) Please do so Ta! doldrums: n. An equatorial region of habitual calm, interspersed with sudden storms, and , importantly to the specified simile, most of the time has virtually no wind.  
  
With regards to the mentioning of letters that move around the page, in case it wasn't made clear or you just plain didn't get it (don't worry, happens to me all the time) for some reason, I decided to make Jack dyslexic. If you think it was a dumb idea, go right ahead and tell me! 


	2. Putting Home Behind

Disclaimer: I own nothing. It's all Big Mickey's. The Mouse owns all. Damn that Mouse.  
  
A/N: To those who read and/or reviewed my first chapter: you're all wonderful. I thank you very much. I feel much less incompetent now.  
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Chapter two-"Putting Home Behind"  
  
Contrary to popular belief, Lady Luck is in the habit of smiling on me. Of coarse, when she doesn't, I hold a cutlass to her throat until she co-operates, if you know what I mean, and what I mean is that I have to make my own luck sometimes. Whatever people may say about my fortunes, they don't know the whole story. Lady Luck and her son Coincidence have saved my skin a score of times.  
  
And on that particular occasion, the Lady Luck had sent Ris Sparrow my way by way of Coincidence, to get me out of that mess.  
  
After he led me away from the burnt-down barn, Ris took me into the local inn that, being so close to the port and therefore in constant proximity to thirsty sailors, doubled as a tavern. At that time of night, there was no one there who was paying any attention to anyone but themselves, and there was very little light, at least half of the candles in the wall and ceiling fixtures were out for the night. Ris took me inside, and sat me down opposite himself at a small table in a small, dim corner in a niche under the stairway.  
  
Even the dim light in there was brighter than the night outside and I could get a better look at my uncle. He was, as I'd observed in the dark, a very tall man, very large and powerful, looking like a bear sitting across the table from me. His tangled dark-brown hair was in a loose braid to just past his shoulders, and on top of his head, he had a beaten looking, black- brown, leather tricorn hat. I hadn't seen this article outside, and I can only assume he'd been carrying it in his hand. Sorta makes sense, removing his hat for the newly deceased. His brown tunic and trousers and blue coat had been rather beaten looking too, as well as the blue bandana around his head and red bandana around his neck. I got the impression he'd been wearing all these things for a long time.  
  
Ris watched me for a moment, as I stared blankly at the table. I heard him sigh, and he got up for a minute, and then returned.  
  
"Jack?" he said. I looked up briefly at him, then back at the table. I heard clinking glass, and then a very small cup, a shot glass, appeared in my field of vision. I sniffed at the brown liquid contents. Rum. I looked up curiously at Ris. He nodded. "Go ahead, Jack-'ave just that little drink. You ever had anything to drink before?" I shook my head. A lie, technically: I'd stolen a sip from my father's beer mugs on several non-consecutive occasions, and liked what I tasted. "Well," Ris said, "I'm sayin' you can have one now."  
  
"But I'm only ten years old, and-" I said questioningly, and looked up at him.  
  
"Jack," Ris sighed "that's gotta be the smallest glass in existence. Not nearly enough there to get you sozzled. Besides, it'll help you out: after the sort of day you've had, you could probably do with a drink, no matter what your age. I know I'm having one."  
  
There's Ris Sparrow's idea of problem solving for you.  
  
I looked up at Ris in time to see him take a drink from a bottle in his hand, probably what was left after having put that miniscule amount in my glass. I nodded to him, and he nodded back. I picked up the tiny shot glass and drank from it. It tasted a lot different than my Dad's beer, and when I finished, I put the glass down and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a cough as it burned my throat. Ris grinned as he stifled amusement at it.  
  
"Feel better? I know it calms my nerves." Ris said. I did feel better, less withdrawn, and more alert, though I'd had so little it was probably by nothing more than power of suggestion. And, as I looked at the lovely, glistening, bronze droplets left in the bottom of the glass, there began a passion of mine.  
  
Ris began to introduce himself by more than name. Or perhaps I should say Captain Ris...and therein lies that coincidence I mentioned. Complete coincidence that my uncle Ris just happened to be the captain of a ship. Entirely coincidental that Ris just happened to be passing through Oxbay with the intention of visiting the brother he hadn't seen since they'd crossed the Atlantic from England then parted ways. Purely a twist of fate that he had arrived that day, and been there hardly two hours before the fire. And when we crossed paths at the barn, that was...well, I think you get the picture.  
  
A series of happenstance occurrences, and outlandish ones at that. I'm well aware. My life seems to be made up of a whole lot of those. Come to think of it, I'd realized it right at that moment when he'd been telling me, and Ris saw it too.  
  
"Jack, lad," Ris had said "You have the strangest sort of luck, but you've plenty of it."  
  
I nodded vaguely. At the time, I hadn't the foggiest what he was talking about.  
  
"Uncle Ris," I said, "You said you were a Captain. On a boat?"  
  
"Ship." He corrected sternly enough that I got the message that there was a true hell of a difference.  
  
"A merchant ship?" I asked further. My prank-accomplice, Ron, had a father who was a merchant sailor, and I was thinking it might be the same ship. That thought was put firmly out of my head by Ris' ironic, but not really guilty at all, laugh.  
"After a manner. What me and my crew...obtain...does eventually get sold." He said, smiling slightly. I thought for a moment.  
  
"Are you from a caravan ship? That escorts the merchants?" I ventured. Ris laughed ironically again.  
  
"Not quite, lad, but you're on the right track. I'm the reason merchants need escorts."  
  
From the expression on Ris' face, I imagine my eyes must have gone wide, or I'd looked like I didn't know what to say. But what I was thinking was apparently written all over my face, by the out and out laugh of Ris' reaction.  
  
"Yeah, Jack, that's right." Ris said. "Plenty of fancy names for it...soldiers-of-fortune, corsair, thieves of the sea, privateers-"  
  
I interrupted him.  
  
"A privateer and a pirate aren't the same thing." I said. Not that I had a strong opinion, I was just regurgitating a scrap of information I'd heard when the mayor had been deliberating on politics. Ris smiled wryly.  
  
"Depends on your point of view, doesn't it?"  
  
"No..."  
  
"Oh, aye? Well, imagine how you'd feel if you were the captain of an English ship and some French privateer told you that he's a privateer with a fancy letter of mark and all, and that piece of paper means that it's perfectly all right for him to go killing you and your crew, stealing everything on board, and sinking your ship. Besides, most privateers become pirates sooner or later." Ris said. "Don't argue with me on this, lad."  
  
I nodded. I still wasn't convinced, but I let it drop until a better opportunity came up and perhaps when I knew more about my subject.  
  
"Have you ever been on a ship, Jack?" Ris continued. I shook my head. "Well, is there an orphanage around here? You have any other relatives?" I shook my head again. "No one else at all who'd take you? Anyone at all would be better than I would. I don't know a thing about kids!" I thought hard for a moment. I couldn't think of anyone at all. Everyone knew I was a handful, and that I didn't get along with the other kids, and everyone thought I was a moron, so I shook my head. Ris sighed. "Fine. Jack, lad, I guess I'll take you in...well, take you onboard...just until I find someone else to watch you until you're old enough to move off on your own."  
  
Apparently that had made me look some kind of excited, because Ris then said, "But only for the minimum amount of time. Don't get your hopes up."  
I nodded my head quickly. Ris nodded back.  
  
"Well, I'd come here to see my brother, but I guess since I've met up with my nephew instead, I guess there's nothing else to do." I nodded my head again. Looking back, I seemed to do a lot of that around Ris.  
  
Ris finished what was left of the rum in the bottle in his hand and stood up from the table. I'll say this about my uncle: the man can take his drink. He looked like he hadn't had anything to drink at all that night. Perfectly sober, which is more than I can say about myself after about age fifteen, but since I'm trying to tell this story in order; I'll try not to digress there quite yet. I stood and followed Ris quietly out of the tavern. I know, doesn't seem much like me to follow anyone or behave quietly, even separately. Never mind both at the same time. But you gotta admit: first thing they teach you as a kid is to listen to any adult who acts like they're in charge and look like they know what they're doing. Fortunately, Ris immediately started training that out of me.  
  
But once again I get ahead of myself. I went with Ris in the night, following him under the lit street lamps, down the hills to the front of town, and to the familiar wooden contraptions of the port. There was a small rowboat tied to the pier, and I looked out into the harbor to see what ship was there that could belong to Ris. A black-hulled ship with dark sails waited patiently like a grand shadow in the similarly tinted night. Ris followed my gaze and smiled proudly.  
  
"Aye. That's her. That's my Black Pearl. The fastest...hell, the greatest ship in the ocean."  
  
I looked up at Ris. I'd seen enough ships to be sure that this was an uncommonly nice one, but Ris had an expression in his eye that I didn't recognize at the time. But I'd understand one day, and, according to some, wear that expression myself.  
  
Ris helped me into the rowboat and told me not to fidget. Then he got in himself and took up the oars. I watched him with mild interest in what he was doing, and it wasn't long before the crew aboard the Pearl was raising the rowboat up by hooks and pulleys and ropes. Ris got nimbly out then helped me out and on to the deck. I stood there, looking confused and probably a bit stupid.  
  
I looked around at the men who were looking curiously at me. A motley lot my uncle commanded. Not that I'm one to talk. But at the time, they were making me nervous, and I stood close to Ris.  
  
"Gents," Ris said, "This is my nephew. His name's Jack- Jack Sparrow."  
  
I awaited the usual guffaws that followed the announcement of my unusual last name, but none came. Probably because it was late, work on a ship is hard, and these men were tired. Also, their captain shared my particular surname.  
  
"His father was my brother. Didn't get to visit him on account of his being recently deceased. Which means Jack here is my brother's orphan. He'll be with us until I find somewhere else to put him."  
  
My uncle's crew muttered some expression of common consent and wandered off. Ris looked at me, then started off to the stairs leading to below deck. He beckoned for me to follow him, which I promptly did.  
  
"Jack, the crew sleep in hammocks in a single room. But since you're not from the crew and you're a bit young to be put up in there, I'll put up a hammock for you in some corner of the cargo hold. Same arrangement as with the cabin boy."  
  
"Alright, sir." I said, mostly out of habit. I was tired, I'd had a long day and my brain was starting to shut it's self off. Ris laughed slightly.  
  
"There's something new, even for me: someone calling me sir without adding, "You're making a scene"! Ris is just fine. Hell, even my own crew don't call me sir."  
  
I nodded, suppressing a yawn. Ris lead me into the cargo hold, and moved some crates to clear out a corner. He went through a sack, and got out a hammock made of a rough, brown netting-like material, and hung it by rings attached to the wall and a pole a few feet away, for just such a purpose. When he finished, Ris gestured at it.  
  
"There you go, Jack. This spot's your. The cabin boy's hammock in across the room. Can't see it from here, past all the boxes." I nodded, and climbed a bit clumsily up to sit on my hammock. I wasn't quite ready for sleep yet. Ris turned away and went back up on deck. I lay back in the hammock, deciding on the optimal way to get comfortable in it.  
  
About a half an hour passed and everything was about still on the ship. The Pearl had left the port a while ago. I was, however, trying very hard not to think about that, and was, to tell the truth, succeeding.  
  
I like to think I'm an optimist, at least a reasonable one. It's not as if anyone can say I've never made the best of a bad situation. At that time, I'd mostly pushed thoughts of the fire out of my head, and Oxbay was becoming a memory. I'd always dreamed of being off somewhere else, but farmers are tied to the land they work and farmers' young sons to their fathers, so the possibility of actually going anywhere was remote. But, there I was, and, oddly, rather pleased with myself. So my Uncle Christopher Sparrow was a pirate. So I had pirate blood in me. Well, that certainly explained some things.  
  
After those thirty minutes had passed, I remembered Ris mentioning a cabin boy who was in here because he was in the same boat as me- pardon that pun- being to young to have his hammock in the same room with the rest of the crew. As I was thinking on this, Coincidence decided to make another appearance. I heard footsteps on the stairs. They were too light to belong to that hulking mass of human that called himself Ris Sparrow, but I sat up as best I could in a hammock and peered into the dark.  
  
"Hello?" I asked of the dark. A young voice answered me. The voice was young enough that it hadn't changed yet.  
  
"It's only me. Where are you?"  
  
"Over here. Behind all these crates."  
  
The footsteps got closer and a face looked out at me from behind the crates. I sat up on my hammock and took notice.  
  
The person who had taken that very opportune moment to make an appearance was near my age, but a few years older and a few inches taller. He was fair- skinned for a kid who worked on a ship, though as a cabin boy he wouldn't be above deck as much as the crew. His hair was dark brown and it looked scruffy and a bit tangled, as if he tried to keep it neat and somewhat groomed, but it was simply not a possibility. He had curious eyes, brown like mine (though I'd observed it at the time as, "brown like rum") and some tattered tan breeches on, a tattered and formerly white shirt that was missing it's sleeves, and a faded red kerchief knotted around his neck, the ends dangling below his neck. He looked no older than thirteen or twelve, though by his clothes he was trying to look older and more like the pirates he worked for. He had a questioning incline to his head as he looked at me.  
  
"You're the captain's nephew."  
  
"I guess I am."  
  
"Are you staying onboard? Long term?"  
  
That question had sounded strange to me. Not only because it was an odd thing to say, but also because of the hopeful tone in his voice. I didn't understand it at the time seeing as I'd never wanted for peer companionship. Not because I had so much of it, but because I literally didn't want it. But hindsight's 20/20 and now I know he'd been excited and happy to see someone his own age onboard to talk to.  
  
"I don't know how long. I don't think Ris wants to adopt me or keep me or anything, but I don't know how long it'll be before he finds somewhere suitable to drop me off."  
  
"But until he does, you're staying."  
  
I smiled. "Aye." I said jokingly, and the other boy laughed.  
  
"Ris said your name was Jack Sparrow?" "That's right."  
  
"Hello, Jack. My name is William. I want to be called Bill, but they say they won't call me that until I'm older. Right now, I'm just Billy. Billy Turner." He put his hand out for a handshake. I accepted it, and smiled.  
  
"Hello, Billy!"  
  
"Jack, can I ask you somethin'?"  
  
"Sure. As long as I'm around here, we may as well be friends."  
  
This notion seemed to please the whelp we'll call Billy until he earns otherwise, who smiled at me.  
  
"Do you actually want to be dropped off anywhere?" Billy said "Or would you rather stay here on The Pearl? Ris wouldn't say no to another cabin boy, I bet."  
  
"Oh, yeah," I said sarcastically "I really wanna be "dropped off" somewhere like so much cargo."  
  
"I thought not." Billy laughed.  
  
"Unfortunately, that's exactly what Uncle Ris said he was going to do. The minute he found somewhere suitable."  
  
"When he finds somewhere suitable?" Billy asked, and I could see the wheels in his head start turning.  
  
"That's what he said."  
  
"Then we'll just have to make sure he doesn't find anything suitable about any place, heh?"  
  
Billy gave me one of those mischievous half-smiles I was (and am) so known for. I practically saw what was in his head, and returned the expression.  
  
"Yeah." I said, and we both laughed. We both intended to work out some way to make sure no where the Pearl stopped looked like any place to leave a ten year old.  
  
Because, after all, who'd want to leave the Black Pearl?

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A/N: There it is! Chapter two finished . The tragedy is over and the comedy/adventure part is ready to pick up. Jack finds out that his Uncle Ris is a pirate and Jack has been introduced to rum, the Black Pearl, and Billy the cabin boy, who, obviously, is the not-yet Bootstrap Bill Turner. Review please, and tell me when I'm being a moron! 


	3. Boys Will Be Boys

Disclaimer: Disney owns everything but Microsoft. That includes POTC and everything affiliated with it. Disney owns you, Disney owns me, and Disney owns your city. The Mouse is everywhere- he's big with a capitol huge.  
  
A/N: Everyone who reviewed: you're all wonderful people! Seriously, each and everyone one of you are so kind and generous you make Mother Theresa look like Simon Cowell. You're all so intelligent, if Einstein were alive today...he'd apprentice under you. You're all so clever...each of your mental energies could provide power for a small municipality. In short, I thank you. Oh, and Chaosity: I'm new to FF...I had no idea it was possible to deny unsigned reviews, never mind that I was doing exactly that...thanks for informing me! The situation has been rectified. To the Unmajestic Majesty: I researched? Where? When? Ooh. Right. Research...lol

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Chapter three- "Boys Will Be Boys."  
  
In my defense, it's an adjustment for anybody, and I did quite well at adjusting, thankyouverymuch.  
  
Yeah, being on a ship takes a mite of getting used to, even for those born to be on one. During my first day onboard the Black Pearl back when belonged to my uncle Ris, everything was strange and foreign and confusing and...in motion. Yes, very...motionous. You know, the pitch and roll of a ship, and how it's so different from the inherently stationary nature of dry land.  
  
I'm loath to admit this. But I like you, so I'll let you in on a little secret.  
  
My first time on a ship, I got seasick and couldn't keep my balance.  
  
Don't you start looking at me like that again- cut that out! It was my first time, after all.  
  
Billy was a very good sport about it. Helped me out. Taught me how to walk with the rhythm of the ship. And it was only about a day and a half before my stomach stopped its rebellion. And never a wise-ass smirk or laugh out of Billy. A very good sport about helping a whelp get used to the sea. During my...time of acclimatization...I had, probably wisely, decided to stay below deck, in short distance of my hammock, and when he wasn't tending to his cabin boy duties, Billy was with me, and we talked, and joked, and acted like I wasn't nauseated and off-balanced.  
  
At the end of the approximately day and a half, maybe two days- a very quick adaptation, I might add, compared to usual five- that it took me to get comfortable with the pitch and roll of the ship, I started following Billy around. Just to help him with what needed to be done and amuse myself, you know.  
  
One evening when I was helping him with some odd job-I believe we were hauling out a crate of salted pork to open for the crew to eat for dinner that night, though I don't rightly remember- the topic of the prevention of my being "dropped off" came up again.  
  
"Billy?"  
  
"Aye?" he answered with a smirk. Our first meeting had made that particular syllable a running joke.  
  
"Where are we going?" I asked, realizing for the first time that I didn't actually know. "If anywhere?"  
  
"We're heading over to Isla Muelle. Them there in Isla Muelle look the other way at "acquisitive activities", as Captain Ris calls it, and one of the important tradesmen buys the things we get because it's cheaper than buying from the merchant fleets. When he gets our stuff, he gets it at half the price, so he can sell it for less and still be making heaps of money from all the people who come for his lower prices."  
  
I considered this. Good strategy. That way, everybody wins. Except the merchant fleets...but nothing's perfect.  
  
"What's Isla Muelle like?" I interrogated further.  
  
"A Spanish colony." Billy said, not minding explanations at all. "Ever been to one?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Well, you weren't missing much. All the buildings have the architecture from Spain to them. That means they're all that bleached-looking, tawny brown, all look like sand. And the streets are made of them rounded cobblestones what are only a bit darker brown than the buildings, instead of them slate-colored, flat flagstones most other colonies have."  
  
I thought of this for a moment.  
  
"So it's all...beige like that?  
  
Billy nodded his head.  
  
"You got it."  
  
"Sounds...boring."  
  
"You got it." We looked at each other for a moment, then laughed.  
  
"Well," I said, "Do you think Ris would consider trying to leave me there?"  
  
"He might." Billy said, "He just might. It's a pretty upscale colony, probably expects you could be properly taken care of by some orphanage or church over there."  
  
"Now, I think my uncle comes off as a responsible man, the sort who wouldn't leave me there if it didn't seem a fit place to leave me."  
  
"Yeah, that sounds like Ris."  
  
"Well, then how do we make the Isla Muelle orphanage or what-have-they look like entirely the wrong place? I've got a few concepts, but what've you got to say about it?"  
  
"Let's hear yours first, Jack."  
  
"Alright. I think we should use this as a skeleton plan, and change it how what happens in Isla Muelle suggests. I could suggest something I've pulled before where we steal all the stuff outta there that we can. You know, take their furniture. But I've done that before and I don't wanna do the same trick twice."  
  
"Sounds logical."  
  
"So here's a fresh plan I've thought of-"  
  
"This should be good."  
  
"Thanks. Anyway, I say we look into the local delicacies." I said. Billy gave me a weird look. "I don't mean to eat. I mean to throw. We mess the building right up, from the inside out. A gigantic, two-man food fight. And without getting caught. Your thoughts?"  
  
Billy looked at me for a minute.  
  
"That's insane."  
  
I grinned, taking it as a compliment.  
  
"I know."  
  
"You're brilliant."  
  
"Great minds think alike."  
  
We looked at each other, watching the wheels in each other's heads turning. This promised to be amusing.  
  
It was late morning the next day when Billy and I were trying very hard to keep out from underfoot while the Pearl was being moored in Isla Muelle. Ris had brought the Pearl there for the sale of their ill-gotten gains, and so they moored at the pier, a gangplank put out so things that were on the ship could be carried to somewhere on land. Erm, you know what a gangplank is, right? You know, a ramp that goes from the dock to a moored ship, so people and things can go on and off? Right.  
  
As I was saying, Billy and I were busying ourselves by not getting underfoot. When everything was tended to, Ris came to me and started herding me toward the docks.  
  
"Jack, lad, this is where you get off."  
  
I followed him, looking over my shoulder to Billy. A conspiratorial expression passed between us, and Billy followed too. Ris looked at him.  
  
"And where do you think you're going?"  
  
"With you and Jack. I wanna see the city."  
  
"You said you thought Spanish colonies were profoundly dull."  
  
"So?"  
  
Ris looked at us for a moment. We looked as innocently as we could manage back at him. Thankfully, I hadn't had a chance to shine in the particular area Billy and I planned on venturing into, at least not that Ris knew of, so he couldn't think of what- if anything- we could get into.  
  
"Fine. I'm gonna tend to mercantile bit here, then, Jack I'll tend to you. You two...don't go too far, stay around here...and try not to do anything...stupid."  
  
We uttered some expression of agreement, and scampered off the ship.  
  
A moment following my feet having hit stationary, motionless land, my face would nearly also have hit it, if it weren't for Billy putting out his arm in front of my chest and catching me, keeping me from pitching forward, face-first into the ground.  
  
"It's a different thing, huh? You had to get used to being on a ship, now you have to get used to switching between the two."  
  
I shook my head as my inner ear assimilated its new equilibrium. Billy nodded.  
  
"That'll be much easier from now on."  
  
And with that little formality out of the way, we headed off into the city. Once we were safely out of sight, we reviewed our plans.  
  
"Billy-remember our plan?"  
  
"Down to the last detail!"  
  
"You got your half of the supplies?"  
  
Billy pulled his shirt up off his stomach, where he had stowed a couple flat, empty burlap sacks, by wrapping them tight around his torso. He lowered his shirt again.  
  
"What about you, Jack?"  
  
I showed him the sacks I'd hidden around me, under my own shirt. I'd managed to get several more than he had: how loose my shirt was had provided me with a little extra cargo space. Billy raised his eyebrows at the quantity of burlap sacks I'd successfully smuggled off the ship.  
  
"And all that fit under your shirt? We need to feed you more."  
  
I rolled my eyes.  
  
"Let's just get this into action."  
  
I looked around for the best way to proceed. I spotted a herd of children being shepherded down the street in a neat little knot, by several women, not one of whom could have been their mother. I considered the significance of this before pointing it out to Billy.  
  
"Let's follow the leader."  
  
I trotted off in their direction, and Billy followed behind. To this day I'm not sure if he had a clue what I was up to at that moment, but I can't say I really care. Prefer to keep people in the dark, don't ask-don't tell, need-to-know-basis and all that.  
  
I was perfectly right about where they were headed. As the local orphans returned to the local orphanage, Billy and I remained right quiet and hidden around whatever corners made themselves available. I smiled mischievously.  
  
"Billy-there's our target."  
  
"But we have nothing to throw...no ammunition."  
  
"I know that. But first things had to be put first. Now's phase two. Remember what we decided that was?"  
  
"Acquiring discarded food?"  
  
"You got it."  
  
We unwrapped the sacks from around ourselves, finding ourselves with six sacks in all, each a bit bigger than would fit comfortably over someone's head.  
  
Not that I'd know a lot about that.  
  
And again with that look. Knock that off.  
  
We left them piled there, except for two, and went off to look for what we needed. The first "port-of-call" was, of coarse, the local garbage heap, just outside the city.  
  
"And you're sure we should check here? Who know what's been dumped?" Billy said dubiously, prodding the remains of a moth-eaten pile of clothes hanging out of an over-turned and rotting chest and looking back over his should to the tan-colored city that lounged lazily inside the city walls.  
  
"It'll be fine." I said, carefully moving a heavily- decaying sheet of lumber and throwing it to the side of the trash heap that reeked of who- knows-what.  
  
It was a truly titanic heap of garbage. Mountains of it, and if we had a mind to, we could have climbed it. But since the exact contents of this mostly-gray collection of were in earnest question, we had no such desire. But whatever was food related and identifiable, we put in the sack. Chicken bones, fruit remnants, mushy potatoes, onions that were sprouting white growths, mushrooms of unknown quality and origin, bits of cheese, spoiled meat, shriveled...something.  
  
We found a good bit of trash in there, filling the two sacks as full as we could, without gagging from the smell, in only a few minutes. Our trash-to- ammunitions effort was put to an abrupt end by a rather mangy looking dog. On it's own, it would not have been enough to dissuade us, particular with the fact that it seemed to be going more about it's own business than anything else. But a mangy looking dog and an angry badger, that was plenty.  
  
We got some very...special...looks from the locals, who spotted us carrying a sack each, filled with foul-smelling food wastes, and carrying them not to the garbage heap, but away from it. Leaving the sacks around the corner from our target, we picked up another sack each and went to the next place. Incidentally, this was the market square, where vendors had stalls of goods set up, each beside the other. Which was just asking for trouble.  
  
I got a cat from an alley. Billy found the largest stray dog he could. And then we set them loose among the market stalls.  
  
"You ready?" I said, clutching the squirming and wriggling cat.  
  
"Let's get on with this." Billy said, holding tight to the collar of the huge dog.  
  
I let got of the cat, which landed-on it's feet of coarse-and Billy released the hound. Chaos inevitably ensued.  
  
The first stall to topple was an apple cart, which had fallen because the owner backed into it to avoid the sharp, pointy bits of the cat. A fishmonger's stall listed and then keeled over when it was hit by a passing dog. A startled horse kicked over a produce stand. Of coarse, it had to bite me, the innocent bystander, first. The two animals rampaged around the marketplace for a while, causing all sorts of wonderful havoc. When the cat found somewhere to sit that was safely out of the sizable canine's reach, it looked like a tornado had struck. Merchants were busily righting the stalls, other people where either helping to put the goods back up or pinching a few for themselves. I'll leave it to the imagination which category we fit under.  
  
So anyway, when the evidence of the preceding example of an urban predator/prey relationship had been contained, we quickly left, and business went back to usual, sans a small quantity of the lower-quality edible wares. No big loss to anyone, right?  
  
Right.  
  
Back at the mouth of the alley where we were hiding the filled sacks, we were gaining quite a collection. We each picked up our final burlap sack and headed for our final heist. Rather...well, much less glamorous than the second, but smelled better than the first. Begging at the backs of permanent-residence food markets and inns.  
  
We approached the nearest inn, put our bags out of sight, and went to the back door. Then I had a brilliant idea.  
  
"Billy! Wait."  
  
He turned around, stopping in the middle of knocking on the back door.  
  
"If we're gonna pretend to be beggars, let's look the part."  
  
Billy looked at me quizzically. I knelt and put my fingers in the dirt between the cobblestones, then stood and rubbed it on my face. Billy smiled.  
  
"You look like that badger at the dump heap." Billy said.  
  
"But it works, doesn't it?" I said, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt and the hems of my pant-legs to make them look torn, and applying a bit more dirt.  
  
"Actually...yes...it does work." Billy did the same, and I knocked at the back door of the inn. A red-faced, gray-haired innkeeper answered the door.  
  
"What you two want?" said the proprietor in a Spanish accent.  
  
"Please, sir," Billy started in what I must admit is a very good starving- street-urchin impersonation. "We need some food."  
  
"Oh yes. Rancid meat even would be a blessing we'd all thank Heaven for." I said, making a similar impression as Billy.  
  
"Who's 'you all'?" the innkeeper asked.  
  
"Our family." I said. "We live in a really old barn. Our youngest sister has contracted a disease from it, and prior to that, the ailment was known only to goats. Our mother died of frostbite."  
  
"In the Caribbean?!"  
  
"It may have been something else, the only doctor we could afford was a true quack. And even that took us five months to save up for." Billy pleaded.  
  
"I see."  
  
"We have seventeen brothers and sisters, and our father has a game leg and can't work! And all our siblings have game things too! We're the only two healthy ones in the family!"  
  
Billy took this opportunity to pretend to cough vigorously. I pretended to have a nervous outburst.  
  
"No! Not you too! In the name of whatever deity you happen to be partial to, not you too!" I over-acted. I always have, I suspect, but what looks stupid for anyone else, looks good when I do it. Oh and that bit about deities was a little phrase I'd picked up from my uncle Ris.  
  
The innkeeper looked thoroughly perplexed. He was entirely unsure of what to make of this, but he knew he wanted it to stop. Someone might notice and it couldn't be good for business.  
  
"If I give you some old leftovers, will you two go...away?"  
  
We nodded energetically. "Yes!" we said in unison, then I added, "We'll be forever in your debt! May you find a fortune in diamond encrusted muskets, each stuffed full with duck a l' orange!"  
  
This time, both Billy and the innkeeper looked confused. Billy shook his head, and the innkeeper disappeared for a moment, then came back with a jumbled mess of the refuse of countless meals, all combined into a single semi-solid swill. Wordlessly, he dumped it on the ground, and went back into his establishment. We laughed and gathered the rubbish into the sacks, half filling both of them.  
  
"That was..." Billy paused to think of an adjective.  
  
"Fun!" I finished. "Now, if we get this much at the big food market, we're set!"  
  
We crossed the square, went up the tan-colored stairs, and crossed the street, toting sacks of leftovers. When we found the major food market in town, we circled it several times before finding that it had no back entrance. Depositing our sacks near the entrance, we had to think of a new plan.  
  
"Can we...?" Billy ventured  
  
"No, that'll never work." I declared.  
  
"And if we...?"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"We could...  
  
"No we couldn't."  
  
"But I haven't even said anything!"  
  
"You say that like it matters."  
  
"It does!"  
  
"It's a matter of perspective, really."  
  
"Well, do you have a brilliant idea then?!"  
  
"As a matter of fact I do."  
  
"Kind of you to share it."  
  
"Keep your hair on, I'm getting to it!" I said, then paused, putting my idea in final order. "Now-follow my lead." "Don't you think you ought to tell me-"  
  
"No I don't think I ought."  
  
I opened the door to the food market and looked around at the shelves and racks piled with merchandise. I put on an anguished face, and a sickly stagger, and Billy, picking up on the clue, did the same. People started to walk wide around us, and some put a hand or piece of cloth over their faces. Inwardly, I laughed myself silly over their fear of catching something from us.  
  
Me and Billy walked up to the counter the proprietor was standing behind. He looked apprehensive, more so than the last people we'd passed, probably because he was worrying not only about his health, but his establishment too.  
  
"Excuse us, sir," I wheezed, and pretended to cough heavily over the foodstuffs in the rack by the counter.  
  
"Yes, yes, what is it?" he demanded, wanting us out as quickly as possible.  
  
"Our families-" I coughed all over the foods again, "Need food."  
  
Billy picked up the plan.  
  
"We're very poor, so we can't pay you. We live under the porch of a tavern. It's very difficult, especially for the taller of us." He hacked.  
  
"All twenty three of us need a doctor, but we can't afford that either." I faked coughing again.  
  
"What do you all have?"  
  
"Larry's disease." Billy put in.  
  
"Who's Larry?"  
  
Billy and I looked at each other for a moment.  
  
"Our father." I improvised. "The condition was unknown before he got it."  
  
"But we think it's airborne." Billy added and we both proceeded to cough on the merchant's wares.  
  
"So," I concluded, "Do you have anything you could offer a poor starving family of twenty four?"  
  
"It was twenty three last time!" "I forgot to mention our three-legged dog."  
  
"With one ear."  
  
"And with one eye."  
  
"And with half his tail missing."  
  
"And with mange."  
  
"And fleas."  
  
"And toe-fungus."  
  
"And arthritis."  
  
"And gingivitis."  
  
"And only four teeth."  
  
"His name's Lucky." I finished.  
  
Both Billy and I proceeded to hack heartily over the food by the counter. The storeowner grimaced.  
  
"Here. Take it. You can have all this!" he gestured at everything we'd supposedly contaminated. We gathered it all up in our arms and as we were leaving the store, we heard him call to one of us:  
  
"Hey, wait a minute! You're limping on the other leg!"  
  
Billy and me looked at each other for a minute then pretended not to hear him, and left the store. We deposited our prizes in our sacks, filling them right full and finishing our acquisitive activities. We reported back to where we'd stashed the other bags and gave a good, hard look at our target.  
  
The orphanage was tawny, like every other thing in the city. It was a decently large building, with a cobble stone courtyard out front, where some kids about our age puttered about. The courtyard had a black grate fence part of the way around, and no gate to barricade the opening.  
  
"You know something, Billy?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"We'll need a guy on the inside for this job. Someone more able to escape detection than us."  
  
I sauntered over to the kids playing in front of the building, Billy a few steps behind me. I looked at the possible accomplices, and one kid looked like a particularly able conspirator. He had a mischievous glint permanently affixed in his eye, a fair complexion, a bright red shock of hair, and a large helping of freckles on the exposed skin of his arms and face. He certainly didn't look very Spanish, unlike everyone else we'd seen so far in the colony, but he looked like he'd be up for a bit of harmless pranking.  
  
"Hello." I said amiably. "What's your name?"  
  
"Henry." The red-haired boy said simply.  
  
"This is Billy Turner." I said.  
  
"Hi." Billy said, and Henry responded in kind.  
  
"And I'm Jack Sparrow."  
  
Henry erupted laughing.  
  
"Sparrow? Really? That's weird! Why don't you have a proper name?"  
  
I was not amused. A man's name, well, that's who he is and all. Nothing funny about anyone's name.  
  
"Henry." I interrupted. "I have a proposition for you."  
  
"What you want?" he seemed intrigued.  
  
"You're not too much of a neat-nick, are you?"  
  
"No..."  
  
"Good, good...so would you be adverse to...messing up inside a bit?" I asked, pointing to the building.  
  
"Well, no...but...why?"  
  
"That's not your concern. Just...would you mind at all spreading these about, just where anyone visiting would see it is all." I said, handing him two of the bags. He grinned impishly.  
  
"My pleasure." "Wonderful! Great, you'll see us working the outside a couple times I expect. But we're in a bit of a hurry, so..."  
  
Henry dashed off into the building, strewing detritus as he went. Billy laughed.  
  
"You make convincing people look easy!"  
  
I looked up at Billy. He was older than me by several years and taller than me by several inches, if you remember.  
  
"As far as I'm concerned, it is."  
  
We each carried two of the remaining four bags and splattered things over the sides of the building, occasionally stopping to wave at Henry through a window. By the time all three of us were finished, everywhere that Ris might conceivably see was thoroughly and strategically slimed.  
  
We met up with Henry and the varied expressions of the other kids outside the building in the courtyard. He handed back the sacks and assured us that he and the other kids would keep quiet, pretend this was nothing out of the ordinary and we told him that would be ideal.  
  
We wandered easily back to the area surrounding the docks, where my uncle had just finished his bit of business. He looked down at us.  
  
"Jack," he said, leading us back into the city. "Like I said, living on my ship was just a temporary thing. I know you've liked it, and I know you've been getting along with Billy, and I'm sure he appreciated your help with chores, but I can't keep you. Now I hear the orphanage here is very high quality. Good staff, well funded, clean, and..." he trailed off as we rounded the corner to the orphanage. Billy and I looked at each other, both suppressing peals of laughter. Ris stood gawking at our handiwork.  
  
The building had splatters of food remnants covering it, and not all of it was readily identifiable as food. The kids who were out front a few minutes before had apparently migrated inside. Teams of women who must have comprised the cleaning staff were already outside, making good headway both on cleaning and chatting. A very efficient place, it seemed. Fortunately, I never became any more familiar with it, because Ris took a moment, then decided that a place that he found in this big a mess was no fit place to leave his only nephew. He turned us around, and Billy and I waved over our shoulders at the roguish Henry, nodding him thanks for his help as we were taken back to the docks, and back on to the Black Pearl.  
  
That night, Billy and I were shooting the breeze in the darkness of the cargo hold. I looked up, talking to the ceiling, and Billy would answer from his own hammock in his own corner. We couldn't see each other through the crates and darkness, but we could hear each other. "Well," I said, "Today felt like a success."  
  
We both laughed.  
  
"You had some pretty good ideas out there."  
  
I shrugged, forgetting he couldn't see it.  
  
"It's what I do. And hey-You did pretty good too."  
  
"Thanks!"  
  
"Where do we go next?"  
  
"I dunno yet."  
  
"Ah."  
  
"Well...if we can keep you off the adoption circuit there too, I feel like we might be home free." Billy suggested hopefully. I thought for a moment.  
  
"Not home, exactly, seeing as I'll lack a fixed address. But free- definitely."

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A/N: I know, I know, I'm evil. I haven't updated in, like, ever. But I updated now! I was just stuck with writer's block, couldn't figure out how what they could pull off to keep Ris from putting Jack up for adoption. As usual, please read and review, and tell me if I'm being a retard! A preview of the next chapter: the Pearl goes to a French colony. Hijinks ensue. And (drum roll please) Jack invents his symbol thing and learns the word "savvy"! Ta! I promise to update sooner this time!


	4. Pardon My French

Disclaimer- I asked Disney if I could have POTC. They said "No!" Then Cinderella's Fairy Godmother turned me into a newt, but then Monty Python's Flying circus helped me get better. But I still didn't own POTC, so me and the guys from Monty Python sacrificed a Pixie Stick to Aquaman. The end…

Disclaimer squared-I don't own anything mentioned in the preceding disclaimer.

A/N: …sigh…the reason it took me sooooooooo long to update is because I got no reviews on my third chapter. No feed back equals hesitation to move on. Please review this time! The button's right there all convenient! Lol. Well, that and writer's block…

Chapter four- "Pardon My French"

I never saw it coming. Even I couldn't have thought about this in advance. I mean, how could I have been expected to foresee Billy and me getting covered up to our necks in mayonaise and raisons trying to reason with an ornery French whelp who speaks barely enough English to tell me his name? Right, I couldn't.

Now, this time I can allow that look. I see how you could be confused about why we were caked in mayonnaise and raisons in the first place.

The honest-to-whatever-divine-you-like truth is that when the Pearl came to Falaise De Fleur, Billy and I still hadn't worked out a fresh plan. We were playing it completely by ear. I forget why Ris had taken the Black Pearl to Falaise De Fleur, or perhaps he'd never told anyone why. He tended to keep as much business to him self as was possible, which is a principle that could have served me well, had I though of it earlier than I did. Unfortunately, hindsight's always twenty-twenty.

But once again, I digress. First stories first.

Billy and me were winging it out there. We actually discussed, in detail, our lack of plan.

"So, Billy…you thought of anything?"

"Nothing. You, something, anything?"

"Nothing."

"Guess that means we have nothing."

"Unless you've thought of something."

"Nothing."

"Least we know we have nothing…"

"That's something at least."

I just love intellectual conversations like that, don't you?

Well, once again, I return to my point. With nothing new to go on, we were going with what we knew, which, as evidenced in Isla Muelle, happened to be minor acts of vandalism. But first, the target had to be located. And seeing how it ended up not existing, that was gonna pose us a bit of a problem. But it was nothing we couldn't handle.

Once we'd wandered some streets away from the pier, we approached a French commoner, an older man with grayish clothes apparently selected to match his hair. We asked him which way the orphanage was, claiming we were brothers and that we were lost, but lived near the Falaise De Fleur orphanage.

Now, I fancy myself rather talented in the area of deception. Actually, I fancy myself rather talented at a great many things, but deception happens to be one of them. Dishonesty sort of comes with the territory, sort of in the job description as it were, if you follow me. Even at ten years old, I'd figure I could tell a pretty little fib. But the Frenchman saw right through us. How? There is-and was- no Falaise De Fleur orphanage.

"Aha! Little boys!" the Frenchman said with a rudely condescending laugh, as if speaking English and existing were the two worst sins that could be committed and there Billy and I stood, guilty of both of them. I disliked this man already. "There is no…how you'd say…orphanage here! All the charity is carried out by the church. So never try to pull the wool over a Frenchman's eyes, _vous savvez_?" The Frenchman said, then stalked away, laughing through his nose stereotypically.

It just so happened that we were standing just outside of the mentioned church. It was monstrous. A cathedral. Stained glass windows of all the most popular saints in their most heroic poses, all caught on their good side.

Which is another thing all together- do you suppose a saint has a non-good side?

Anyway, as Billy and me looked upon this monolithic place of worship, and its cast iron doors and all, and stonework to put the mountains to shame, and gargoyles to scare the gargoyles off lesser buildings, we instantly and simultaneously decided there didn't exist enough food refuse in the world to vandalize this massive sanctuary. And even if there were, there was something wrong, even in the eyes of two aspiring pirates, with attacking a church full of orphans.

However, this told us loud and clear that a Plan "B" was needed.

"Billy," I said without looking at him, seeing how both out necks were craned upwards, trying to take in the sheer magnitude of the building. "Aside from this establishment it's self, which needless to say seems untouchable, what else would Ris use to decide if he wanted to leave me here?"

"The city it's self?" Billy suggested. "I can't say I could see Ris seeing fit to leave you somewhere you're likely to get trampled or impaled within ten minutes…hypocritical as that may be when you really think about…"

Billy didn't need to finish his sentence. A pirate trying to protect me from violence?…Not if I could help it!

Unfortunately, that posed another problem: it was a pretty safe town. The only unsavory characters I'd seen there worked for my uncle. But if there's one thing I know for certain, if you look hard enough, no matter where you are, you'll find a jackass.

I keep telling you-stop looking at me like that!

Well, after a moment more's consideration I trotted off down a promising alley. Billy took a moment to realize I was gone, but when he did, he followed quickly behind me.

"So, where are we goin'?

"To find someone."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Do you actually know anyone?"

"Nope."

"But you're gonna find 'em anyway?"

"Yeah."

"Is that supposed to make any sense to me at all?"

"Nope."

"Jack? Do you actually have a plan at all?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you think you should tell me what it is?"

"Nope."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

"Well…as long as you're sure…"

"Sure, I'm sure."

I stopped so suddenly, Billy almost stepped on my heels. I smiled at the sight of what had to be the seediest, grimiest, cheapest, and roughest of back-alley bars. While this sight would later put a smile on my face quite often, that first time there, it wasn't for the reasons it would be in the future.

Billy looked at me blankly.

"Jack…you're kidding…"

"I kid you not."

"I really think it's about time you told me what we're doing."

"What you're doing is just what I'm doing. And be sure you do it when I do it. Particularly the part where we run like bloody hell."

Billy looked at me with a smug you-try-too-hard look. A fine thing from the whelp who "wants to be called Bill", let me tell you!

"Like "bloody hell", huh?" he said, almost laughing at me.

"Oh, shut up." I grouched at him, then walked over to the entrance of the bar, and opened the door.

We almost coughed and choked in the cloud of smoke from various sources that billowed out of the room, but we decided it wouldn't have been good form. Instead, we stepped in and stood side by side in the doorway of the dim tavern hall as the door swung shut behind us.

There are rats in sewers beneath the cities that would be ashamed to show their hideous, furry, little faces in that place. Every one of those hulking masses of filth who formed the tavern patronage that weren't entirely involved in themselves and their drinking to the exclusion of all else, were busying themselves with turning one another into filthy, smelly, greasy little piles of human pulp on the dingy floor.

"Jack…" Billy said nervously "now I really think you should inform me of this so-called plan."

I decided that would be the opportune moment to let the poor whelp in on the basics.

"We bait and run. Run right back to Ris."

Billy nodded with vague understanding. I glanced around and spotted a real mangy mongrel of a man.

Not that they all weren't, but my point remains…

I walked up to him, Billy trailing tentatively behind, still not seeming entirely sure about this plan. He looked like he thought the whole thing was insane. Ludicrous. Mad. Nigh suicidal. Well, of coarse it was: it was my plan, wasn't it?

"Hey, mister!" I said kid-ish-ly "Are you from this city?"

He looked at us, seeming less than impressed with what he saw. So was I: the man reminded me half of an angry bulldog and half of a bloodshot monkey.

"Who are you two kids?" the Lout said rudely and telling by hi accent, was in fact from the city. "I don't need to talk to you two! Leave me alone or I'll turn you both into pork salad, _vous savvez_?"

Personally, I don't see how he could turn either one of us, never mind both of us, into pork salad at all, really- I'm not a pig now, and I wasn't then.

Don't look at me like that! I'm not telling you again!

Anyway, this man suited the purposes I was planning, but he seemed rooted to the spot in his seat in the tavern. I'd have to change tactics and hope Billy could keep up with what I was doing.

"Mister!" I said suddenly, purposely startling him into coughing. "What do you do?"

"Man o' my own free will."

Which translates, of course, to pirate, or possibly simple vagrant. Standard terminology.

"Is that why you have no nose?" I asked, and the Lout-and Billy too actually- stared at me like I had a few dozen. You see this gentleman-though I use the term loosely- was completely and fully nose-endowed. And Lout and Billy knew this. And Lout clearly disliked being told otherwise.

"What'd you just say?"

I spoke louder, purposefully and thoroughly obnoxious. Billy stood by, and I observed he was just as confused at the Lout with the ill-favored look.

"I wanna know where your nose went!" I declared, loud enough for all creation-or at least the tavern- to hear.

"What are you two talking about?!"

"But I haven't said anything!" Billy protested.

"Billy," I pointed out "you just did!"

"…uh…"

"What in blazes is wrong with you two?!"

"We're just curious, my snout-less friend."

"I got a nose!" the Lout roared.

"No sense living in denial." Billy interjected, and I smiled. Great. He was finally catching on to the plan.

"Clear out! Both of you! Go! Are you hard of hearing?! Go! Or I'll make you hard of breathing! _Vous savvez_?!"

"I was just asking is all…"

The mad-dog contortion of his face spoke volumes. It looked like this would work, particularly since he, immediately following my just mentioned statement, proceeded to jump up and pull a knife on us.

"That is IT!"

"Billy…" I said calmly and collectedly, backing away from the knife-wielding maniac. "…I do believe that this is the part where we RUN!"

Billy was already halfway to the door.

Dashing out the door after him like a clever, charming mouse being chased by a gargantuan Lout of a cat, I pulled ahead of Billy, and we ran feverishly down a sharp left turn into an alley, the elephantine man close behind. You've heard the phrase "swearing like a sailor"? No mere exaggeration, believe you me. But this man was conjuring such a proverbial blue streak as to embarrass the average sailor.

And in front of two kids too. Shame.

…I'm NOT dignifying that look with an answer.

So we ran down the alley. Out of the alley. Into the street. Down more alleys. The lout was still behind us all the way. So we ran up some alleys, and out into some streets. I was panting, my heart pounding in my ears, actually running for my life for the first time in the just mentioned time frame. In a mildly masochistic, mildly psychotic way, it was the most fun and exhilaration I'd ever had in my life.

Gradually we realized we'd lost the lout. Unfortunately, we'd lost ourselves in the process. Hopelessly lost.

"Jack…where are we?" Billy panted.

I looked at him like he had two heads and half a brain.

"You expect me to know? You really expect me to know?"

"Guess not…where's Ris, anyway?"

"The area of the docks, I think, or something…wherever that is…"

Exactly how excited Billy was showed plainly on the blankly crestfallen expression on his face. I shrugged and looked around.

I'd never seen a structure quite like the huge warehouse that glared me in face when I examined my surroundings, trying to figure things out. It impressed me, but not in the grandiose way the monolithic church had. What struck me about the big-city shipping warehouse was the sheer functional-ness of it. A big, no-nonsense, gray box, neatly gridded-in windows, a double door in the front, smaller, but proportionally exactly the same as the building's front that it was set in. A wood and metal sign proclaimed it a shipping warehouse. A straightforward, no-questions-asked tax collector of a building.

"Let's ask the way back to the harbor in that…thing!" I suggested "They'll know!"

"How do you know that?"

I looked at him blankly.

"It's a SHIPPING warehouse!"

Billy nodded.

"I knew that."

I walked up to the heavy building and opened the door.

It was dim in there and only one arrangement on the miles-high ceiling provided a shaft of light that sat sullenly in the middle of the room. Crates and boxes were piled to the sky against the walls. A big ladder sprawled against the wall, leading to an alcove, a loft half-filled with planks. And in the middle of it all, perched on a single crate in the middle of the room, with no apparent motivation, unless he was in a state of meditation…or maybe medication…was the sand-haired French boy with freckles. There was no one else there-it was evening, after closing time. The whelp on the box, I could only assume was the manager's son, or something similar.

I trotted up to the kid, Billy following me.

"Hello, there." I said personably. The whelp looked at me like he was assessing me and I wasn't measuring up to standards. I suspect it was because I'd addressed him in English.

"French." He said in an almost incomprehensible French accent. "Speaking French."

Apparently we looked like we couldn't understand him through his accent, and he launched into a stream of French.

"_Je parle Francais, mais Je ne parle pas beaucoup de Anglais. Tu parle Francais, non? Tout le monde parle Francais, c'est correct?_"

Billy and I looked at each other. This was gonna get interesting.

"Look," I said slowly and clearly and a bit loudly, the way some people do when they're trying to break a communications barrier without learning a new language. "My name is Jack, and he is Billy, and we're in big, big trouble with-"

Billy cut me off, interjecting with his well-traveled wisdom.

"Let's start with just names and see where we can go from there."

I nodded.

"Good idea." I turned back to the boy. "My name is Jack… Jack." I said gesturing widely at myself.

My contemptible Anglophone self was clearly not making a good impression. But at least he understood, or at least seemed to. He nodded and pointed to himself, declaring he was Francois. I started gesticulating at Billy.

"This is Billy. Bill…y. Billy."

This Francois did not seem to understand. I gestured some more. He still didn't seem to comprehend.

Billy approached him, and started to speak haltingly.

"_Me llamo_…no, sorry, that's Spanish…. Uh…oh, right! "_Je'mapelle Billy._" He said simply. The French kid looked pleased, at least, more so than he had with me. But he was still looking at us the way you might look at a piece of donkey manure freshly plucked from beneath a leper's toenail.

"_Saluté_" he says blankly. Now, I know you usually hear about people looking blankly at something. Well, this kid had that so perfected that he went on to invent blank speaking. Actually, he wasn't quite blank, at least not at first. Before going back to his usually expressionless gaze, he raised his eyebrows. I got the feeling that this was him so surprised, he was nigh hysterical.

"Look, I'm Jack, he's Billy, and we're lost. Need help! Hiding!"

François shrugged.

"_Je ne comprénde pas."_

I, not being as versed in blankness as he was, settled for the blank stare which I promptly gave him.

"June a-gone to what?"

"He said he didn't understand."

The French whelp nodded at this translation.

"_C'est_…it's right…_mon_ English is…_est tres mal_…is very bad."

I sighed. Huffed in exasperation. We'd lost the Lout, but he wasn't going to stay lost. We still had to keep Ris from leaving me there and we certainly didn't have time to teach François The King's English: Language Of Shakespeare. I settled on trying once more to augment my talk with undignified, bizarre, wide hand gestures. Felt absolutely ridiculous, seeing how I'm not usually a hand-talker.

This time, I honestly and truly what you're looking at me like that for.

"Hide! Us! Need to! Up there! Secret!"

I pointed clearly to a loft I'd spotted over his shoulder. He looked at me and said nothing. I was just about ready to punch him. I must have looked it too, because Billy decided this would be a good time to step in and step forth.

" _Mon ami et moi est perdu._ "

François shrugged. Now that he understood, he didn't care. A smug smirk spread across his face.

"_C'est sont perdu._"

Great. There we were in a damned warehouse, probably with an angry thug closing in every second, lost as souls on the River Styx. Thank god François was there to correct Billy's Francophone grammar. In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm, by the way, mate.

I didn't have time to put in my cynical little two cents worth and tell the both of them to speak English or shut up, because the door was being thundered at. But the sound of the profanities issuing forth, it was that Lout.

I dashed for the loft and ladder with a swift glance at Billy.

"_C'est sécrét!"_ Billy said sternly to François, then made for the loft, quick at my heels.

For a short time, it all went quiet. François had gone back to his silent, impenetrably blank musings and the Lout had…gone to look for another entrance or some such thing, I dunno. At any rate, for some short length of time, Billy and me sat behind some planks in the loft, hardly breathing. The loft was dry and smelled like lumber and sawdust. There was one window in the side of the loft.

I poked my head up just enough to peer out the window. I could see the ocean out that window. Now, what happened next was serendipity of the highest order: the window (which happened to be facing west, squarely into that present sunset) had the underside of the ridge of the roof above it, and in that alcove nested a family of sparrows (the sort with a small "s" if you take my meaning). Apparently taking its first flight, a young male of the brood swooped down in an inverted arc, flying away from the nest. I saw the image of the bird against the sun and above the ocean for maybe half a second, but it burned into my brain like a brand on a horse (or on a pirate's arm) and stayed there. I grinned. I expect Billy looked at me like I was insane. He often did, and it never bothered me. Some how that sparrow-sun-water image condensed me, the events at hand, and all the other events to come into a single image. I'd only find one other symbol like that ever again, and that one would be unknown to almost everyone, and the people who do see it, I almost never explain it to, but that's quite another story.

The seconds dragged by, painfully quiet. The air hummed with tension: if-when- that loud, violent Lout got in, we would be in very real danger. My senses, like in other emergencies I was fated to end up in, were heightened to the point where I could not just hear my own breathing and heart beat so damned loud, I could hear Billy's, and smell his lunch on his breath. Hell, I could see the individual hairs on François' head, who was on the floor-the loft being about as high off the floor as the top of a tallship's mast off the deck. One sudden noise-like the violent Lout forcing his way in-would send me into a full blown fight-or-flight response. I developed a taste for this immediately. I was in Trouble and On The Run. I loved it. And it was all summed up by the sparrow-sun-water. In the midst of all the alertness, for some reason the thought that flashed through my mind was "I'm gonna be a pirate"

I had no further time to elaborate on that. The door groaned, then gave, several boards cracking under the Lout's shoulder. Billy and me stayed stone still. A conversation took place below us, which Billy translated for me later.

"_Ou est ils?! Deux garçons.._." the angry Lout said,: "Where are they?! Two boys…"

"_Voici_." François had no trouble answering: "There." I assume he'd pointed at the loft.

I didn't know at the time that "_Voici_" meant "there", and since without that knowledge, I didn't know we'd been ratted out until Billy leapt up and started down the ladder like a monkey, I was in a great hurry to get down and get away, I slipped, having exchanged caution for speed, and plummeted down, and cracked open a crate of mayonnaise jars, getting covered in the stuff (and a few splinters besides) but I had no real injuries, and so got back up and kept running. I pushed over another crate, hoping to use it to block the Lout's path. No such luck. He turned and went after Billy instead, and all I succeeded in doing was get raisons stuck to the mayonnaise.

Our flight across the warehouse for the door was chaos from the start.

Billy was running from the Lout Hell-for-leather, and with a good reason. We were both in that mad scramble for the door. Billy slipped in my mayonnaise mess, earning his own mayo and splinters. We turned a corner sharply as we raced for the door. The Lout wasn't as quick footed as us and kicked out another crate of raisons, showering all three of with them. Only they didn't stick to the Lout because he wasn't covered in mayonnaise.

In the middle of this all, François sat as deadly still as that grand church's stone gargoyles.

Billy and I made it to the hole in the door, and before we started running off in all sorts of impractical directions, I remembered in what direction I'd been looking when I saw the sea.

"Billy! This way!"

We took off down the road. Around the corner. Down a side street. Up an avenue. Three rapid sets of footfalls, three rapid heartbeats, one stream of profanity issuing from the Lout chasing us. And -finally- out to the docks!

We ran into Ris here, as we'd expected. Except, this was a bit more literal than we'd envisioned. After our colliding with Ris, the built-like-a-bear pirate captain saw the man chasing us immediately. We were pushed safely off to the side and Ris' sword was in his hand before Billy and I had time to process that anything had happened.

Whatever it is, the Lout did for a living, he probably did it with his fists and sword. Whatever it is the Lout did for a living, he was infinitely worse at it than Ris. The Lout would slash wide, Ris stepped back, then in again to strike. Steel clanged on steel as the Lout deflected with a turn, but it took too long, and by the time the Frenchman from the tavern had learned his lesson and retreated to lick his wounds, he was beaten black and blue and poked full of holes.

Ris sheathed his blade and turned to us.

"The ship's almost ready to depart, and you'd better be too. Both of you. Jack, I'm not leaving you here to get into any more trouble like **that**."

Ris went back to work and Billy and I grinned at each other. We'd pulled off another one!

We turned around to sit under a cluster of trees in the fading light while we waited to leave, when we bumped into someone. Again, literally.

We'd collided with François the French Whelp, who looked as blank as ever.

Once again, I forgot that François did not speak English, and launched into an outraged stream of my native language, occasionally sprinkled with a few of the lighter obscenities I'd gleaned from Ris' crew.

"How in damned bloody hell did you figure to show up here?! After ratting me and Billy out to that hideous, bile-faced son of a…a…a motherless goat?!" I shouted, and added a bit more besides along the same line, before Billy held me back from punching the kid. By the way, I don't know if you'd been interested to note that even then my grasp of English grammar had started to decay from exposure to sailor-talk.

François remained infuriatingly placid.

"_Je ne comprénde pas._"

"I don't give a brig-rat's arse where June a-gone!..."

"Jack, shut up." Billy said kindly. I would do no such thing.

"And another thing!: I know you speak some English! You already did! What, English a last resort that you only speak when ignorant people bother you?!"

You see what a right healthy "debate" this is turning into, no?

"_Tu est trés, trés fou..._"

I looked at Billy.

"What'd he say?" I demanded. Billy paused, quite aware the translation would spark further "debate".

"He said you're very, very much an idiot."

I whirled back to François, eager to "debate" some more.

"I'm an idiot?! Well, who's the one who has only two facial expressions, the first one don't count!"

"_Je. Ne. Comprénde. Pas. Savvez?_"

"Jack, he really doesn't get it…"

"Does he get anything?"

"I really don't think this is necessary…"

"You know what else isn't necessary? Your appendix! Give it to me!"

Ris, at this point, intervened in our spirited little "debate".

"I think that's quite enough of that. Let's go."

As Ris herded Billy and me back on to the Pearl, I glowered over my shoulder ay the smugly expressionless face of François, and shook my fist at him. Just before I was away from where François could see me, I stuck up two fingers of my left hand at him in one of the most satisfying "British Bite-Me"s I've ever delivered.

That night was, of course, as dark as any, so I wouldn't have been able to see my hand in front of my face, if it weren't for the candle. I was lying half-reclined on my hammock, a scrap of paper in my left hand, pressed against my palm, a writing implement in my right hand. A quill's unlikely, probably a charcoal, but I don't really remember. I was quietly sketching away with a species of quiet concentration. Billy spoke.

"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Something."

"Ooookay…" he paused. "You certainly didn't seem to get along well with the people of the French colony."

"What was that word they kept saying? "Savvy"?"

"_Savvez_", it means "you know"."

"No, not savvy. "_Savvez_"."

"Right. Savvy. You know."

"No, "_savvez_"."

"That's what I said: savvy."

Billy half-laughed, half-sighed.

"Whatever, Jack, just get rid of that candle and go to sleep."

I'd finished what I was doing and stowed the writing implement. I snuffed out the candle.

Then I waited a while before putting the simple, basic, line-drawing of the sparrow-sun-ocean into my vest pocket.

A/N: Well, that's yet another chapter! Hope you liked it! Review this time, peoples! Lol. Oh, and the British Bite-Me "Jack" mentioned is just his name for a gesture that's considered rude in Britain, like the middle finger. They stick up the middle and first finger. Ta, for now!


	5. Upside The Head

_Disclaimer: I reiterate–it's not mine. It's all __still Big Mickey's._

_A/N: Well, I haven't updated since the dawn of time because I started working on another fic (a H2G2 I'm working on with my sister, if you care, "Brothers Or Something Of The Sort", along some of the same "prequel" lines as this one. I love prequels! ) I just sorta figured I'd do a chapter for this one while I'm at it. This is probably just gonna be a short chapter, just to get the characters from one place to another, just to do until the next longer update. Also, another point: part of the delay was due to figuring a way to get the path designed for this fic to agree with Dead Man's Chest, So, fear not, I puzzled out a timeline. So back by popular demand , here you go:_

**Chapter 5– "Upside The Head"**

Ris just about accepted that I was there to stay. I most certainly was not about to dropped off anywhere while there was anything I could do about it and I was clearly clever enough that there was.

So the Black Pearl was outfitted with two cabin boys. Ris had already come to me and Billy and told us he knew we orchestrated the whole fiasco at all three of the places we went to, but told us he wasn't angry with us and if we thought that far outside the proverbial box there might be a future for us in this line of work anyways.

I was thrilled. I was living out the dream of every red-blooded, properly raised ten year old boy in...well, anywhere really. You hear all kinds of sentiments from boys who's ages have just ventured into the uncharted territory of double-digits along the lines of running away to be a pirate or growing up to be a pirate or what have you, but the total population actually doing exactly that amounted to, approximately, me and Billy.

Life plays tricks though. If you don't know that for yourself now you will soon enough. Maybe some time after your voice changes, hah. After that episode of elation came one of prolonged, murderous boredom.

All the colonies we'd visited so far had been relatively close together. Within a couple days of each other, which is very close for transport by ship. I'd never been onboard a ship for a long haul before and I was far from prepared for it.

Being at sea for long, rather dull periods of time is one of the less-publicised aspects to my sort of lifestyle. No prey, no pay as the saying goes and no pay means no shore time in interesting ports. Sometimes you're trolling about the trade routes for months before sighting a ship and then sometimes it's an empty one and pointless to attack. Not to mention that travel by ship takes a long time whether you're waiting around for some fat merchant vessel to come by or just going from one place to another one. If a ship's due in August, no one blinks if it's still not there in September, it becomes a mild annoyance to wait for in October, a real inconvenience in November, but no one gets worried until December, but then the ship arrives in January, still not considered to have been inordinately late.

What was my point again?

Ah, right. My first long haul on board a ship.

Now, the first thing you have to know is where we were going. My uncle Ris was starting to become a pirate of some renown, and it was becoming clear to some fairly important persons overseas that it would be much more productive and beneficial to have him and the Pearl on their side in some upcoming campaign. They were offering an extremely lucrative sum pay for his help. Lucrative enough in fact to catch Ris' ear. But they couldn't send him the details through the mail. They were too sensitive; the letter might be intercepted. That, and of course the lack of a fixed address to send it to. He had to come to them if he was interested. And like I said, he was.

But the thing was this: these fairly important persons who wanted to employ him lived across the Atlantic. In England.

It was a long haul: it was some time in late spring. We were due to arrive in August. And being my foolish and inexperienced ten year old self, I expected us to arrive in August.

Time and seasons are easy enough to lose track of when you're on a ship in the Caribbean where it doesn't matter where you are, you'll miss winter if you blink.

We'd barely been out for a month when Billy and I began to succumb to boredom. We were below deck in the cargo hold–a bit of a default location for two cabin boys who didn't know what to do with themselves since most of our work was done in there– as we addressed the problem.

"Do you want to–"

"No, sorry, Billy, I don't."

"Well, that's alright, we could–"

"No, I don't think we could."

"Then instead, let's–"

"No, let's not."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I dunno."

Billy looked around. His eyes fell on some spare bits of broken lumber.

"I have an idea." he said, "I haven't done this since before I joined Ris' crew, but I remember it being pretty fun. When you were living in...wherever...did you play games?"

"Well, no, actually. Not really."

"Oh...well, you seemed like you would. You never...pretended to be things and made up stories?"

"Oh, those games. Yes, I did...but alone."

"Alone!"

"You have a problem with it?"

"Only that you're daft."

"Thank you."

"Anyway, I have an idea."

It was several hours later that two pieces of lumber had been crudely and clumsily sanded comparatively smooth. They had been whittled roughly to points, and one side of each board had been carved with a curve. With many instances of cursing, banging of thumbs with hammers, and accidentally bent nails, we managed to nail another piece of wood crosswise about six inches from one end of each piece of wood.

There was some whispering and mischievous laughter as we set a scene for ourselves to play in. It was a long time ago in ancient Rome. The scene we set, not the actual date. I was the nameless, imprisoned slave, oppressed, beaten, and supposedly never to escape the gladiatorial pits. Billy was Emperor Stylus of Rome, the brave warrior emperor, who fights in the pits for fun. We were to meet in the sands of the colloseum, which for our purposes were the decks of the Black Pearl, at the end of that conversation.

It wasn't a particularly dignified affair. We were just ten or so, you understand, and neither of our skills with a blade were much to look at. Ris had been training us, of course, and not just in the particulars of running a ship. We were both expected to be fully-functioning members of the crew one day, and that meant knowing how to handle ourselves and our weapons in a raid or any other situation. So we weren't just waving sticks around and hoping for the best. Basically, we knew what we were doing, but not well.

The sound of wooden blade clunking against wooden blade is something less exciting than the clang of steel on steel, to say the least, but as you can see with any pair of ten year old boys equiped with wooden sticks, we couldn't have been happier if we were weilding jewel-encrusted scimitars. The boards collided and we faked back and forth withjuvenile exuberance and inexperience. Like I've said before, I was a small, scrawny, monkey-like thing when I was a lad, but I don't recall if I've mentioned that Billy was a bigger boy. Not saying he was heavy, more that he was tall, broad shoulders, muscular. Looked like a grappler. So he had trouble catching me, but when he did, he gave me welts that lasted a week. Me, I was quick but didn't hit as hard. Riddled him blck and blue with bruises.

I've always been one that tended to get under the skin of people around me. Get them to think and feel what I want them to. Even when I don't mean to. But when I'm happy or excited, so's everyone around me. Usually.The game escalated, not just strikes, blocks and footwork, now also laughter, shouts and catcalls. And most of all, cheating. It and anything lse to gain an upperhand was not only allowed, but encourged. I've always been a creative cheater.

As the game got bigger, and louder and more energetic, we both leaped on top of crates and tables and whatnot, trying to gain a higher point to stand on, like we'd been taught—it's harder to fight someone standing above you, you understand. As we tussled and jostled and got knocked off of things, we eventually started backing our way up the stairs from the hold.

The crew was woken from the bored sleepiness brought on by long times at sea with all the work done. They took notice of us miniature pirates in our miniature deul, gathering around and egging us on. I've always loved attention, and was absorbing the laughter and cheers and applause like a sponge in a bowl of water.

Billy had overpowered me with his significantly greater bulk, forcing me back against the railing of the upper deck. I ducked under his arm and stepped round behind him, and grabbed a belaying pin—you know, one of those things you ti ropes to that look vaguely like rolling pin handles arranged along parts of the rail—they come out and in a tight place you can use them as a club. But I had no actual intention of bludgeoning Billy, of course. The line between fantasy and reality can get a bit elusive at times, but I had a good handle on it at that particular one. I used the belaying pin to wrap him on the knuckles, making him drop him wooden sword. I kicked it away, then backed him against the rail.In the interests of striking a dashing, victorious pose, I tossed away the largeish, ungraceful belaying pin.

Somewhere behind me, it collided with something solid and annoyed. The first I infer by the sound, the second by the yelp the target made.

It was almost in unison that the entire crew turned aound and took one step back from me. I stood frozen to the spot with the point of my wooden sword still pointed at Billy.

Ris had stepped out of his cabin to see what the commotion was. He was just in time to get in the way of my belaying pin. Which I still hold was his fault, the belaying pin had some momentum going, who was he to interupt it?

"Jack. Why am I not even thinking of considering the merest possibility of being just slightly inclined to being surprised?"

"Because I'm just that good."

Ris looked at us sternly for a moment. Then a good-natured smile spread across his face.

"Good answer. And good fight, boys. Now back to work or find something less theatrical to occupy your time."


	6. A Deal's A Deal

_A/N So, I've been asked what I'll do if all or most of this is contradicted by the as-yet-unseen third movie. Well, if that throws too much of his out...well, Jack's supposed to be telling the story in this fic. So he lied. It is Jack we're thinking of here, after all._

**Chapter 6—"A Deal's A Deal..."**

Nothing terribly noteworthy happened until we arrived in England. As I said before, we were scheduled to arrive in August, but due to circumstances beyond our control and totally within what can be expected for a voyage of this type, we didn't put in on English soil—meaning soil in England, as opposed to belonging to it like a colony—until January. And let me tell you, it was something. January...you know...winter. In the northern hemisphere. That meant one thing.

Snow! I'd never seen anything like it before, and neither had Billy, for that matter. I wouldn't see it again until I was back there as an adult. If you've never seen it before, snow's a hell of a thing to encounter. And if you return to the Caribbean and meet up with someone whose never seen it, or even heard of it in some cases, and try to explain it to them...you sound like a loony. Rather like sand, snow is, except lighter, sort of like cotton, except whiter than sand or cotton, and very, very cold.

Heh, cold. That reminds me. Billy and I were both sniffing and coughing pretty much the whole time between the time we crossed the equator heading north and the time we crossed it back heading south again. We were unaccustomed to the climate, to say the least. Born in sweltering heat, lived in sweltering heat. When we arrived in England, it was in the middle of a snowstorm and I tell you not one man on board knew what to make of it, with the exception of my uncle, who'd lived there for a large part of his life. One or two of the dullest knives in that particular drawer thought they'd died and were experiencing the torments of Hades, which I suppose would mean they thought Hell actually froze over. Ris told them they were being gits, to put on coats and to get back to work

We started becoming suspicious when escorts met us at the entrance of the bay. We were just plain surprised when it turned out they were there to welcome the Black Pearl and her captain and crew. It was evident they they genuinely needed Ris' help. He went into town alone. Secrecy is a virtue learned only by experience, unfortunately. He'd had his turn already. Mine was yet to come.

While Ris was in the city, Billy and I sat on the steps of the forecastle wrapped in coats and shivering.

"What do you suppose he's doing?"

"I dunno, Billy."

"Do you think we could find out."

"Not now, I'd say. He's probably somewhere well-guarded talking to someone important."

"So what do we do if he won't tell us what's going on? I want to know!"

"Can you read, Billy?"

"Well enough, I suppose."

"Good."

"What's in your head, Jack?"

"We'll sneak a peek in the log book in his cabin later."

"He won't let us look in that, no matter how convincingly you ask."

"Who said anything about asking. Just get him out of his cabin long enough for a quick look. We'll need a distraction, and a reader." I said, and looked at him, "You just volunteered to be the reader."

"I did?"

"Yeah."

"Ris should be gone another hour, then?"

"About that."

"Excellent. Let's go play in the snow."

"What? What about the plan...the cold! The cold! We can't play in that, we'll freeze!"

"Oh, we'll be fine. Let's go see if Mother England is all she's chalked up to be."

Billy sighed, his breath hanging like fog in front of his mouth for a moment. He consented and within a few minutes, we were roaming the country sides of allegedly-Great Britain and freezing ourselves to the—huh, what?

Oh, no. Nothing in particular against the country. Nothing at all, produces some very catchy songs, and a lot of cows and sheep too. But it's like this, see...I was born in the Caribbean. So were most people of my generation who live here now. Most of us were born here by people who moved here from England. These people—our parents' generation, the ones who moved, I mean—understandably miss their native land, to which they were as a rule very loyal. And after they've set up lives in the Caribbean colonies and had kids, they're still nostalgic and patriotic for where they were born, and so they try to instill a love of their own homeland in their children. So what you end up with is colonies full of immigrants' children and eventually adult descendants who are raised to be fervently loyal to a place they've never seen and know only through idealized tales a growing number of years old. But he key is...the generation born there have never seen it. They were raised to play lip service to the old country England, but their heart isn't really there. It's not green hills and wide rolling countryside and farms and castles and Old World traditions and royalty and thriving cradles of civilization that come to our minds when we think of home. Comes to our parents' minds, not ours. To us, home is blue oceans, white sands and hot sun and rain that can fall like bullets. It's small, up-and-coming towns and new frontiers and hot, dense jungles. To the islands of the Caribbean do our loyalties lie. Not to the Old World.

But that's rather enough philosophy for now, innit? My point was that Billy and I were eager to see if old England was everything people said it was. But, given our own conceptions of what home was like, we didn't feel particularly at home or close to our roots when we were wandering knee-deep in snow. About forty five minutes of wandering (and piling snow and throwing it around) I tuned to Billy.

"Right. Now you turn back and look for Ris. That should give plenty of time for him to get back and make his log notes. Be real scared and upset and all and tell him exactly what's true."

"That I..."

"No, that I 'm still out here somewhere, you can say I'm lost if you like, and he needs to come find me. While he's looking for me, you sneak into his cabin and read his journal."

"You're sure you'll be alright out here alone?"

"I know I will. Hurry up!"

Billy disappeared into the blustering January white.

I wandered off a little ways further, out of curiosity, and out of lack of a place to sit. I was rather disappointed with what I'd seen, really. Even if it was all nice and mossy and green, say in springtime or something, I don't think it would have impressed me much, but probably because England is made up to us to look like a place full of faeries and castles and cockney chimney sweeps. I had thus far been disappointed. A while off, I found a stump to sit on. I was starting to feel sleepy. If you have any familiarity with cold at all, you'll know if I was tired the last thing I should do is sit still, because cold makes you tired, and eventually makes you dead, and I had least nearly an hour until Ris came to get me.

It was considerably more than an hour, as it turned out. My breath was turning to crusts of ice on my hair, and I couldn't feel my nose or toes or fingers. The snow blowing ever which way had no apparent intention of stopping. I was on the verge of shouting out 'Finally!' when Ris arrived out of the curtain of snow with a small pack.

"Lad, I knew ya were crazy, but this is insane! My fault, I guess. Should have explained about snow before I let you loose in it. You it loose on you, apparently. Here, follow me back."

Ris opened the pack and the first thing he took out was a thick woolen blanket, the rich dark green of seaweed. The second was a small, metallic container. He wrapped me in the green blanket, and rubbed my shoulders vigorously, trying to get my circulation going.

"Stand up now, get your blood moving. Here..." he said, handing me the metal cylinder, "Take a mouthful of that. Warm you up."

I did it. I vaguely recall assuming it was coffee or tea or something of that type, from the description of it as something that warmed one up. I took a mouthful as instruct and coughed, partially in surprise, and partially at he burn in my throat. Rum.

I believe I've made mention of Ris Sparrow's problem-solving skills before.

At any rate, he led me back to the town, and from there, back to the ship. Orders were given, and in the orange glow of the winter evening, we left, with no one seeming to know or ask where the bearing were taking us.

No one but Billy. I asked him that night, when we were in our hammocks in the hold.

"For what I went through out there, you'd better have read the log."

"I read the log."

"And?"

"They offered him a huge amount of money. I dunno how much...can't count that high. That was a lot of zeros after that one, though. We're meant to go trolling around—"

"Trolling?"

"Hunting. Pirate term for hunting other ships. You know how fishermen take the big dragnets, seines, and pull them though the water hoping for luck to get fish with it?"

I nodded.

"Right. Well, Jack, when a pirate ship goes sailing about hoping to catch another ship to prey on, it's rather like the fishermen with the seines, and since fishing with a dragnet is called trolling, there it is. Anyways, so our job is to go trolling around for vital shipments going to France. They're apparently outfitting their ships to attack the English port we were just in, so we have to stop the ships of supplies and munitions from reaching France."

"Privateer work?"

"Pretty much."

"But Ris is doing so well as a pirate."

"Aye, apparently they know that, so they're offering big money for his loyalty."

"That doesn't make sense...he's doing so well as a pirate, as a completely free man. Why come all the way here just to take work."

"I dunno. But the captain is a smart man. Cunning as sin, and twice as deceptive. And I can't imagine him tying himself down with a job like this unless here was something else up his sleeve."

Was Billy ever right. Ris was a lot like me, or more likely visa versa. He was smart, always had a plan, and did he ever have one that time.

Not just up his sleeve, but up both sleeves, under his hat, in his coat pocket and maybe down his...well, no reason to get into that is there? No pun intended of course.

Point is, Ris had a plan. A hell of a plan.


End file.
